A legacy in Greeen

Charles Aguar left Athens a little cleaner and greener

Posted: Friday, June 10, 2005

Along the sidewalks of Broad Street in downtown Athens, trees planted a few years ago grow slowly, the shade from their eventual billowing branches an eagerly awaited thing, especially in the heat of a summer afternoon.

For a landscape architect and city planner, it is like this. Visions of the future are slow to arrive - if even they arrive in one's lifetime. The late Charles Aguar can be credited with inspiring people to bring those first trees to Athens, a town he moved to in 1970. (A former student of Aguar, Joe Burnett, saw the tree project through, though the first trees were removed in 2002 to make way for trees better suited to urban environments).

While Aguar lived long enough to see hundreds of his visions become environmentally enriching projects around the state, he didn't live to see all of his visions for Athens become reality.

Still, said his wife, Berdeana Aguar, who spent the greater part of her life supporting her husband's efforts, Charles Aguar was happy to attend the groundbreaking for the North Oconee River Greenway in 1999, the Greenway being an idea he first presented to the city in 1973. Today, he's known as the "father of the Greenway."

On Saturday, a special part of the Greenway, Aguar Plaza, will be dedicated in Charles Aguar's memory. Berdeana Aguar said it's a welcome honor, but the efforts by her husband and the many people in Athens who share his views must continue.

Athens' not-so-green past

Shortly after Charles Aguar moved with his wife and family to Athens from Minnesota, he wrote a letter to the editor of the Athens Banner-Herald addressing his concerns about the Classic City. Published on Dec. 24, 1970, the letter actually was addressed to Santa Claus - a request for Santa to please help keep Athens from destroying itself with strip malls, concrete and sprawl.

"We know you'll hear from those few selfish people who could care less about the public welfare and will always put on the pressure to change zoning for sites where the potential profits are the fattest," he wrote. "(All we're asking is) that you help maintain what's left of the 'good life' here in Athens for our children."

"He used the newspaper (to communicate his ideas)," Berdeana Aguar said, looking through other yellowed newspaper clippings contained in the many thick files of her husband's work. She is writing a book, "A 50 Year History of Planning and Urban Design, 1950-2000, Charles Aguar."

Elissa Eubanks/Staff

Aguar Plaza, part of the North Oconee River Greenway, will be dedicated Saturday.

Berdeana Aguar recalls her early years in Athens with her husband, when the two would canoe down the North Oconee River, stopping to picnic at a favorite site where today her home stands - built on stilts for minimal impact on the land. The ground below is covered in the original vegetation - "Charlie believed you couldn't improve on nature," she said.

In the early 1970s, the North Oconee was little more than a dumping ground and Aguar said she and her husband were saddened by the pollution they saw as they meandered down the river. But Charles Aguar, who had worked as a city planner in Minnesota, taking on such projects as the rejuvenation of devastated iron ore mining areas, knew what to do.

Aguar had come to Athens to work as an associate professor in the School of Environmental Design at the University of Georgia, and began assigning projects on the city's environmental beautification to his students. Those trees on Broad Street, along with Bishop Park, Sandy Creek Nature Center and even early designs of the Greenway were projects first discussed and worked on in his classes. With his continued persistence, the city adopted many of Aguar's ideas.

In his research, Aguar found as early as 1925, the initial city plan for Athens showed recommendations to protect the Middle and North Oconee Rivers by establishing parks and conservation corridors along both rivers.

Unfortunately, little was done to carry out those recommendations. While the rivers have seen significant cleanup and the Greenway promises to continue to raise awareness of the rivers' importance to our lives, today both the Middle and North Oconee still run muddy brown.

"I don't think I'll live long enough to see (the rivers run clear)," Berdeana Aguar said. "But I hope I do."

Hope for a greener Athens future

Aguar died in February 2000, the result of a longtime heart problem. But just months before, in November 1999, he expressed his happiness about the groundbreaking for the North Oconee River Greenway in an article published in the Athens Banner-Herald.

"I knew it would happen," Aguar said. "I was just afraid I'd never be here to see it. I didn't know it'd take 27 years."

But, said Berdeana Aguar, "He was used to that - that's the way it is with city planning. You plan for things that will take place far into the future."

A map of Georgia marked with Charles Aguar's planning, design and public service projects between 1970 and 1998 is nearly filled - a mark in almost every county in the state, and in most cases, more than one mark in each county - identifying Aguar's presentations, evaluations, consultations or sites preserved by his helping to found and organize the Georgia Heritage Trust, which he presented in 1972 to then-Gov. Jimmy Carter. As a consultant and evaluator, Aguar embarked on a long-term effort with the Georgia Heritage Trust that became the largest recreation and cultural resource acquisition program in the history of the state.

"He provided leadership," said friend and fellow conservationist Al Ike, who, among his other environmental work, served as chairman of the Greenway commission for five years. "You always have to have somebody who has a specific goal in mind - you need a person with vision, and Charlie provided that vision. And he stuck to it," Ike added.

"Every community needs people like Charlie," echoed Dan Hope, chairman of the Oconee River Land Trust, who also worked with Aguar on a number of projects. "We're extremely lucky how many people are concerned about the quality of life in Athens," he said, adding people who work toward cultural, environmental, historic preservation and the like have made Athens a better place to live.

Still, all agree there remains work to do.

Thanks to Aguar's efforts some 30 years ago, though, there has been continued work toward Athens' being a place where its citizens can enjoy the "good life" Aguar referred to when he wrote that first letter to the editor in 1970.

"He had a lot of impact on Athens," recalled Conoly Hester, who wrote extensively about Aguar's and other peoples' efforts in zoning and development in Athens for the Athens Banner-Herald and the Athens Observer in the 1970s and '80s. "We need people who have a dream of a better way things can be," Hester added. "And Charlie had that dream."